FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Judicial Financial Warfare against Italy’s Coalition Partner Lega

July 5, 2018 (EIRNS)—Like the losers among Clinton-Obama neo-cons, the old-paradigm faction in Italy doesn’t accept that it’s lost power in favor of what it calls the “populists,” meaning the Lega and M5S coalition government. The Italian Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) has ruled that € 49 million should be seized from the Lega national accounts, an amount that would paralyze party activities. The ruling relates to charges of mismanaging matching funds from when Umberto Bossi was head of the Lega. Bossi and his son, who was then Lega treasurer, were convicted of having used up to € 300,000 of Lega money for personal purposes. A judge in Genoa then ruled that in order to reimburse “taxpayers’ money,” the Lega should return the totality of matching funds, which amounted to € 49 millions. That ruling has been now upheld by the Cassazione.

Lega head, Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, stated that “this is a political process, concerning facts that occurred 10 years ago and money which I have never seen.” Salvini has called on State President Sergio Mattarella to intervene.

The all-resentful anti-Lega front hailed the sentence and fine. Phony anti-Mafia author Roberto Saviano wrote that Salvini should ask Russian President Putin for financial help, on top of “the already open credit line with the Czar.”